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There seem to be a lot of people who don’t understand this whole primary/general election  split.  They’re the “I like Bernie but we have to vote for Hillary…” types.  Well, no you don’t.

It works like a lot  of championship sports tournaments.  The Republican winner advances and the Democratic winner advances.  Simple.  Whoever wins, between Sanders and Clinton, will participate in the election  in November, probably against Trump unless the Republicans are willing to screw over their Teabagger faction in the same way Clinton is trying to screw over the progressive wing of the Democratic party, in which case it will be some other lose because, quite honestly, they don’t have anybody good.

So, for those who say “I like Bernie, but…” here are a few reasons you should just go ahead and switch your primary vote to Sanders,” especially if you likve in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana or any other state that hasn’t voted yet.

1. After Sanders wins, party  unification will be relatively swift.  Hillary’s supporters have no reason to dislike Bernie except, of course, that he’s not a woman.  He will likely appoint just as many women  as she would, and nominate even more liberal people to the Supreme Court.  Beyond that, he is the things they say they admire about Hillary.  He is intelligent, and capable, and experienced.  He is honest.  He is progressive.  Oh, sure, there may be a brief flareup of PUMA, this is an emotionally charged time, but in the end “They like Bernie, but…” means they like Bernie.
2. Bernie beats Trump, Cruz, and Kasich in head to head polls.  Hillary doesn’t.  If the Republicans pull a fast one and nominate, say, Paul Ryan, for instance, Bernie will kick his ass, too.
3. There is a sharp differentiation between Bernie and Trump.  It will be the millionaire vs. the working class hero.  If Hillary wins the nomination, it’s just  a battle between two extremely rich people.
   If Bernie gets the nomination, the election will be about going forward, into a better future, or going  back the dark ages.  If Hillary gets the nomination, it will be “Should we go back to the Dark Ages, or just back a little bit.”
4. Momentum.  If Bernie gets the nomination, he goes into the  election riding  on top of a wave, which will become a surge. Good for downticket Dems, too.  If Hillary gets the nomination,  she gets it scarred and tainted, limping across the finish line.
5. Bernie’s cool.  If you vote for Bernie, you’re  cool.  You get to tell people you voted for Bernie.

 

 

Just watching a Morgan Freeman thing  on dimensions and parallel universes and what happened before the  big bang, and random phrases are leaping out at me reaching out to the world of other minds, all the universe is made up of geometrical shapes, which is true, of course.  Two, three dimensional worlds being pulled together by a force, a trillion years is probably about right per cycle, A collision between two brain worlds, I guess that’s how they’re explaining the Big Bang.

Well, we can’t be too sure of what happened back then.  There’s a lot we still don’t understand about the universe.  I find it hard to accept the Stephen Hawking idea that there was no time before the  Big Bang, but that leaves me with an infinity of universes stretching back into infinity, and as mind bogglingly impossible as it is to imagine time going on forever into the future, it is twice that impossible to imagine that same distance back to the beginning, because it is a strong tenet of our universal belief acceptance system, a foundational structure of images in  the human  mind, which goes far beyond religion. We want things to have had an origin.  We want to know what it is.

So, we’re at an impasse.

Pope Francis is feeling the Bern.  He has invited Senator Sanders to the Vatican for a conference on social, economic and environmental issues.

 

I’m totally surprised by  this story, in many different ways.  First, I’m surprised that nobody seems surprised.  I’ve been watching CNN for the last two hours (CNN Europe, admittedly, but still), not a peep.  So much so, that I started to wonder.  Was this some joke site spreading misinformation on facebook?  It did seem a little bit hard to believe.

So, I went to Google, saw the story was up on the BBC and the Guardian, and watched a clip of the actual announcement on Morning Joe.  There was my second surprise.  I’d  generally classed Joe Scarborough in with O’Reilly and Limbaugh and Beck and all those other raving hatemongers, but he  actually listened respectfully and let Bernie talk.  Weird.

The next thing I wondered about was the timing.  He’s taking time off during the New York primary for a trip to Rome?  Politically, it’s a trade off.  The publicity he’ll get from this visit will be tremendous and, since he’ll be speaking at a conference on issues close to his agenda, he has a rare opportunity.  He and the Pope have similar views on reaching out to the poor and building a better world so he can transform the direction, not just of American politics, but of the future of mankind.

What I find perhaps the most amazing about this, however, is just the man’s flat out, crazy stamina.  April 13th, he’ll have a massive rally in Washington Square Park.  Then, on April 14th, the debate.  Plenty of stress and pressure there.  Then he flies to Rome on the 15th, attends the conference, gives a speech, and flies back to the U.S. on the 16th.

Not bad for an old man.  Not  bad at all.

There is a lot I could say about politics tonight, but I’m going to give you all a break.  Despite all the rancor and bitterness going on between Camp Clinton and Camp Sanders, the  story that garnered the most outrage today was a poem.

It was a poem by Calvin Trillin, in the New Yorker, and it went like this:

Have they run out of provinces yet?

If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret.

Long ago, there was just Cantonese.

(Long ago, we were easy to please.)

But then food from Szechuan came our way,

Making Cantonese strictly passé.

Szechuanese was the song that we sung,

Though the ma po could burn through your tongue.

Then when Shanghainese got in the loop

We slurped dumplings whose insides were soup.

Then Hunan, the birth province of Mao,

Came along with its own style of chow.

So we thought we were finished, and then

A new province arrived: Fukien.

Then respect was a fraction of meagre

For those eaters who’d not eaten Uighur.

And then Xi’an from Shaanxi gained fame,

Plus some others—too many to name.

Now, as each brand-new province appears,

It brings tension, increasing our fears:

Could a place we extolled as a find

Be revealed as one province behind?

So we sometimes do miss, I confess,

Simple days of chow mein but no stress,

When we never were faced with the threat

Of more provinces we hadn’t met.

Is there one tucked away near Tibet?

Have they run out of provinces yet?

The first couple of comments criticizing it just talked about how simplistic and shallow it was as a poem and I thought “What a bunch of poetry snobs.  If I’d written that poem, I’d be damned proud.  It rhymes straight through, it doesn’t break meter, it makes sense, and  is even a little bit humorous and makes a point.  Miles above most of the shit that gets called poetry today.

Later, commenters started to go on about how racist it was.  I’m not Chinese, admittedly, but I can’t find anything in there that is offensive.  Is the fact that everybody in the world loves Chinese food somehow anti-Chinese?

So, there’s my opinion on that.

Just a couple of minutes ago, I saw this on my facebook page:

It may not seem to be an exceptional or great work of art, but look a bit closer.  That is not a mural on a building, that is a mural on 50 buildings.  It’s got depth.  It took a hell of a lot of logistic co-ordination to create it.  And it’s an example of what can be done, even in a desperately poor city, to produce something amazing.  It’s called ‘Perception’ and it’s by an artist called eL Seed.

I hope this is the beginning of a trend.  If I ever get back to Cairo (which I would like to do) there will be something there besides the pyramids to see.

I have had a few Clinton supporters point out to me that “Feel the Bern” is kind of a dumb slogan.  It doesn’t really say anything.  It’s a pun on his name and puns are, it has often been said, the lowest form of wit.  Whatever.  It has been an extremely effective slogan.  It’s catchy. It’s snappy.  More than that, it’s somehow visceral, and accurate.  This is a campaign on fire and we do feel the Bern.  We feel a warm and fuzzy glow from associating with so many other people who want to make the world a better place.  We feel the flames of passion rising with each victory, and a smoldering, slow burn of resentment with each setback.  It’s an absolutely great slogan.

Hillary is losing, on the other hand, because she has had a series of lousy slogans.*

First, let’s talk about her official slogan.  “I’m with her.”  So?  We’re with him.  Since our chosen candidates are of different genders, they use different pronouns.  It emphasizes the ‘1st woman president’ talking point, but that’s neutralized by the fact that plenty of feminists are voting for Bernie.  Madeleine Albright did not improve  matters any when she said any women who didn’t vote for Hillary were going to hell.

Then, her early campaign slogan of “I’ve already got this locked up, people, we’re just going through the motions.”  That got her through  the first few debates, which were all held in secret, while everybody in the country was watching football.

After the close race in Iowa and getting thrashed in New Hampshire, she switched that to “Neener, neener, I’ve got all the superdelegates, it doesn’t matter how much you win by.”

Then, the elections moved South and her campaign slogan became “Bernie’s too white.”  Seriously?  Who are you, Hillary, Aretha Franklin?  Amazingly, though, that  one seemed to work for a while.  It’s run its course, however, as Sanders has a LOT longer record in fighting for civil rights, has picked up a few key black endorsements, and is even or slightly ahead of her among black voters nationwide.

Then, her campaign slogan was “It’s all over, Sanders people, you should just give up now, we’re way too far ahead” and I admit, I was becoming discouraged.

Then, after the blatant cheating in Arizona, things became very bitter and her campaign slogan became “Come on, guys, stop saying bad things about her.”  Amazingly, it fell on deaf ears.  There is just SO MUCH bad stuff to say about her.

Now, after having lost the last several states in a row (and having Nevada reversed!), with Sanders leading her in number of states won and leading her in some national polls, she has come up with a new one.  “I’m not even sure he’s a Democrat.”

So?  Despite what you might think, Hillary, most Democrats do not think of you as the owner leader of the Democratic party, and most Americans don’t consider being a member of the Democratic party as an automatic job qualification for the presidency.

It’s time for Hillary Clinton to adopt a campaign slogan that’s been proven to work, that will make everybody happy.  “Feel the Bern.”

 

*Not really.  She is losing because she is a horrible person and nobody trusts her, and there’s no particular position or ideology she stands for.